Sycamore Row

Ancil Hubbard, but don’t get excited.” He relayed the facts as he knew them—an assumed name of Lonny, a bar brawl in Juneau, a cracked skull, lots of cocaine, and fake papers.
    “He’s sixty-six years old and dealing drugs?” Jake asked.
    “There’s no mandatory retirement age for drug dealers.”
    “Thanks.”
    “Anyway,” Murray continued, “this guy is pretty crafty and won’t admit to anything.”
    “How bad is he hurt?”
    “He’s been in the hospital for a week. He’ll go from there to the jail, so his doctors are in no hurry. A cracked skull is a cracked skull.”
    “If you say so.”
    “The locals there are curious about the discharge paperwork from the Navy. It appears to be authentic and it doesn’t really fit. A fake driver’s license and a fake passport might take you places, but a discharge that’s thirty years old? Why would a con man like this need it? Of course it could be stolen.”
    “So we’re back to the same old question,” Jake said. “How do we verify him if we find him?”
    “You got it.”
    There were no helpful photos of Ancil Hubbard. In a box in Seth’s closet they had found several dozen family photos, mainly of Ramona, Herschel, and Seth’s first wife. There were none from Seth’s childhood;not a single photo of his parents or younger brother. Some school records tracked Ancil through the ninth grade, and his grainy, smiling face appeared in a group photo taken at the Palmyra junior high school in 1934. That photo had been enlarged, along with several of Seth as an adult. Since Ancil had not been seen in Ford County in fifty years, there was not a single person who could offer an opinion as to whether he favored his older brother as a child, or looked completely different.
    “Do you have someone in Juneau?” Jake asked.
    “No, not yet. I’ve talked to the police twice. I can have a man there within twenty-four hours.”
    “What’s he gonna do when he gets there? If Lonny Clark is not talking to the locals, why would he talk to a complete stranger?”
    “I doubt if he would.”
    “Let me think about it.”
    Jake hung up and thought about nothing else for an hour. It was the first lead in months, and such a weak one at that. The trial started in four days, and there was no way he could race off to Alaska and somehow verify the identity of a man who did not want to be identified; indeed, one who’d apparently spent the past thirty years changing identities.
    He walked downstairs and found Lucien in the conference room studying index cards with the jurors’ names in bold letters. They were arranged neatly on the long table, alphabetized, all ninety-seven of them. They were rated on a scale of 1 to 10, with 10 being the most attractive. Many of them had not yet been rated because nothing was known of the jurors.
    Jake replayed the conversation with Albert Murray. Lucien’s first response was, “We’re not telling Judge Atlee, not yet anyway. I know what you’re thinking—if Ancil’s alive and we might know where he is, then let’s scream for a continuance and buy some more time. That’s a bad idea, Jake.”
    “I wasn’t thinking about that.”
    “There’s a good chance the old boy might be locked up for the rest of his life. He couldn’t show up for a trial if he wanted to.”
    “No, Lucien, I’m more concerned with verification. There’s no way to do it unless we go talk to him. Keep in mind he has a chunk of money on the line here. He might be more cooperative than we think.”
    Lucien took a deep breath and began pacing around the table. Portia was too inexperienced, and she was also a young black female, notthe type to pry secrets out of an old white man who was running from something, or everything. That left him, the only available member of the firm. He walked to the door and said, “I’ll go. Get me all the information you can.”
    “Are you sure, Lucien?”
    There was no response as he closed the front door behind himself. Jake’s only thought was, I hope he can stay sober.

    Ozzie stopped by late Thursday afternoon for a quick visit. Harry Rex and Portia were in the war room poring over juror names and addresses. Jake was upstairs at his desk, on the phone, wasting time trying to track down a few more of Wade Lanier’s forty-five witnesses. So far the task had been frustrating.
    “Wanna beer?” Harry Rex asked the sheriff. A fresh Bud Light sat nearby.
    “I’m on duty and I don’t drink,” Ozzie replied. “I hope